Wait a minute, negating the-exclamation-of-being-before-anyone-else requires moderation? what if I were to say the elements of a list, and referred to the one before the second? Would that also require moderation?

You didn’t. I had a comment here waiting for moderation (it apparently didn’t pass). It basically said it didn’t matter what Darcin said, so long as he didn’t comment on the fact that he was posting before anyone else

I actually saw an episode of an anime (made in France) where a junior high school student crushed a glass in her hand. However, it was later found that things in and around the school were being weakened by high-frequency sound waves. (Is “anime physics” a special branch of “cartoon physics”?)

Either the ferrets have a history of being incredibly at buying stock (the fact that they apparently often don’t know what they’re investing in tends to undermine the “Canny Investor” theory) or a lot of investors are completely insane.

During the rare times I view the news it seems that investors are often easily lead by anything. I swear if Bill Gates *sneezed* it would alter investments in computer stock based on speculations as to what it meant.

you know, you’re probably right, but I think it’s just a bunch of greedy misers that are doing everything in their power to prevent the ferrets from getting a hold of another asset… unwittingly giving them money in this instance .

Oh yes: given that the vast majority of transactions in the stock market are intended to maxamize the return on an investment, and that one person believes that the best way to do that is to sell, while another believes that the best way to do that is to buy, we know that close to 50% of the decisions made in buying and selling stock are wrong. The only times when both the buyer and seller can be correct are when the seller wishes to get money out of the market to use for some other non-investment purpose (if it was an investment purpose, and the return would be better, it would be a wrong decision for the buyer to buy the stock rather than investing in a similar alternative) or when the buyer wishes to use the stock as a tool to actually manipulate some non-market situation – in which case the goal is not to make money.

Most investors, however, at least attempt to study and predict the market, examine stock performances, or otherwise avoid random gambling – even though the system is sufficiently complex that it amounts to random gambling anyway. (Statistical analysis of managed funds shows a match with the expected results of random decisions to buy and sell to within a very high degree of accuracy – and those are generally run by respectable professionals with a staff and research departments of their own). Given that the ferrets admit that their decisions are essentially random, I wouldn’t expect many investors to actually follow their investments UNLESS they had a demonstrated track record of being very lucky OR those investors are not following normal human behavior patterns – and are thus “completely insane”.

Well, the ferrets would quickly gain a reputation of being a force that drives the price up, and so a lot of inexperienced people would jump on the chance to ride the rise a bit and then eventually jump off with a higher gain.

If they were truly inexperienced, they’ll suppose it will continue rising forever, and refuse to sell. If all of them are this kind of inexperienced, the stock value never falls.

Of course, never are all of them equally inexperienced, so as soon as one of them starts selling (in this case, probably Rock Milton) the price falls a few cents, and everyone pulls out, worried more about not losing the money they’ve “gained” than about what that will do to the price.

but it’s also about speculating on the comic, and why things might occur in some manner.

if you scrolled down and everyone always posted: Rick this comic is Awesome, post the next one Now, I cant wait to see… etc, etc; the comments section would be boring, so we expand on the topics presented by the comic to that we not only have something interesting to talk about with complete strangers, but we also have a reason to scroll down and see what people posted

Oh, Rock, When are you going to learn? You are supposed to invest in Shiny Paperweights and Long Narrow Tubes Inc. Shiny Paperweights and Long Narrow Tubes Ltd. gets all their stuff made in China, while Shiny Paperweights and Long Narrow Tubes Inc. is made in the USA! (and they actually make shiny paperweights and long narrow tubes.)

Trying to ’steal’ money from the ferrets isn’t a very viable plan. Remember that their former dad likely did not hide the fact that he hated his family and they would pick up on this. Plus if you remember the first strip, they were trying to give the ferrets away for free.

This depends on the terms of the will – but it’s fairly likely that the money is simply in trust for the ferrets for the duration of their lives: there may be a provision for their potential offspring, but it’s probable that there is a secondary provision for a larger charity or redistribution after the trust is no longer needed.

It’s unlikely that a human-dominated legal system will tolerate enormous masses of money being left to pets in perpetuity – and a will that tried to do that would be fairly easily challenged. Now, a will that calls for a redistribution of a trust at a later date can be more readily challenged at that point on the grounds that the situation has changed. That’s why large sums of money are often used to create foundations.

Since we already know that Petnaping isn’t that serious an offence (“And the sentence was going to be time served too”) we could be headed for anything up to an attempt to eliminate the ferrets.

Seriously now, I thought part of the point of having someone take over the animal that inherited the fortune was to prevent this animal from having kids, thus freeing the person writing the will from having to think of what will happen after their pet, too, dies.

Now that I think of it, that would mean that when the pet dies, it counts as someone dying without a will, meaning their money goes to the state.

It all depends on what the person writing the will intended to do, and on how the courts interpret that. Since animals – being property – cannot own property, money can’t be left to them directly in the real world. In the real world, you generally can’t simply create a trust, or call for a court-appointed steward, because real animals are incapable of understanding what’s going on, making their wishes known, or suing over terms that aren’t being enforced. Ergo, you generally need to leave money to a human beneficiary who you trust to care for your pet, and will usually need to specify what happens to the remainder of the money once the pet dies. If you want the animal bred – or to be allowed to breed – and homes found for the offspring, you can write that in as well, but it probably won’t be very enforceable.
You can leave money to an organization, such as the ASPCA, with a provision that your pet receive due care – but unless you establish specific guidelines, and a mechanism for checking, the treatment of the pet is still up to that organization.
In the Housepets universe, pets evidently still need a steward, but trusts are presumably legally enforceable since the pets are capable of understanding what’s going on and appealing to the courts if the terms are not enforced, rather like minor children.

Now, pretty much any real court would throw out a multi-billion dollar bequest to pets as being frivolous – a very tiny percentage of that would do nicely – but this is a comic strip and these are sapient pets, ergo “it’s funny” can be expected to take priority.

1) Each comic is either very interestingly emotion tugging, or blatantly funny.
2) The art style started good and stayed good.
3) Theres an actual story.
And 4) The comic actually updates when it says it will! (Still waiting on that Halloween comic Scott…)

Does only TWO, count em, TWO anthropomorphic cats make it a furry comic?
When the rest of the re-occuring cast are all human? (And one demon thing…)
I think not.
Also VG Cats is about video game parodies mostly. As Housepets are one offs leading to arcs back to one offs.

That only happens when the name relates in some nondescript way to the product or service that the company provides. Or when the owner’s too lazy to come up with anything original. Like “The Source by Circuit City” (Which, BTW, no longer exists as a brick ‘n’ mortar store: Circuit City’s outlets are the Source, and you can buy things directly from their online stores.). C’mon, that’s the easiest name ever. “The Source” of all electronics provided “by Circuit City”.

The value of their purchase just gained 1 billion dollars after their purchase, so their networth is +1,000,000,000. That’s a good thing. That’s like saying the tooth you put under the pillow is worth more in the morning than it was when you put it under the pillow.

Actually, I was referring to the fact that you always put a pair of socks into the wash (otherwise, how did you put them on to begin with?), but more often than not, you can’t find the pair when you take them back out!

God, don’t we just hate people like this? The ferrets I mean. Their adorable don’t get me wrong.
But it’s disgusting how lucky people get with money. Especially in the stock market. Even if it were me who did well there I would puke on myself.

this reminds me of an episode of The Daily Show where Jon is like, oh, news about the recession, let me listen while holding this champagne glass.” and pulls out a sugar glass of champagne from under his desk, and the news is enraging and he crushes the glass with his hand. (though he goes on to crush the bottle of champagne and a small aquarium in the episode as the enraging news progresses)

no, what they are doing is common in the stock exchange, every once in a while someone pulls out before a stock crashes, they are just explaining their case… they made that much more money because people thought they were investing in a viable company, and followed the leader, when they realized their mistake and pulled out, they had made tons of money off stupid investors… who probably then pulled out because they did, causing a crash (that last bit is speculation though).

Those lucky ferrets, how’d they do that? They were for sale once their owner died, then they were going for free, now they’re taking over the stock market. Has every rich person sat in a dung heap before ascending to the top? Why don’t you see anybody born into rich families, like London Tipton (ugh) or Tony Stark (better)?

Mind you, Bill Gates, who used to be the richest man in the world, kind of ruined his successes with Windows Vista, so he was essentially still in a dung heap. Now some dude who knows what he’s doing has fixed many of Gates’ mistakes with Windows 7.

Can’t it be PG-13? Or how about we make a new thing, PG-12? PG-9? C’mon, I’ve seen people bring their little kids to District 9 (ugh.. BARF! Sorry for getting that all over your shirt, Niell Blomkamp) and letting them play Mature rated games. What’s even a little “Animated/Cartoon Blood”?

Well, we could always go classical. For centuries thirteen was more than old enough to get married, join the military, or be executed.

Even now, 4-H programs involving breeding, raising, and sometimes slaughtering animals are considered suitable for children who are well under thirteen. All PG-13 really says is “check it out yourself and decide if you want your kids to see it”.

Housepets tends to be pretty conservative about it’s rating – which certainly suits it perfectly.

I remember an ESPN thing once… Sports Guy vs Sports Dog. They had one of their columnists pick teams, and pitted him against a Samoyed husky-black Labrador cross who chose teams based on which dog treat he ate first. The Sports Guy lost badly to the Sports Dog. Which suggests that having ferrets pick stocks might be a viable market strategy.

It would be really bad if something terrible happen, say, the ferrets invested in an ear cleaner that turns out to cause more earwax, causing the company to go bankrupt, and the ferrets, just so happened to have invested all of their money in that company! Or worse, the ferrets go crazy with their money and soon found themselves flat broke! No more neighborhood.

Well, since they have a court-ordered steward, they’re unlikely to be able to do that anyway. I’d be very surprised if they actually have direct access to more than a tenth of that money.

Besides, the estate totals fifteen billion in cash plus the factories that generated that money in the first place. Figuring 5% interest, they can expect an income of two million dollars per day – just in interest on the cash. The factories apparently built up that money in a reasonable length of time too – figure ten years perhaps? (for even figures) – that would be an income from the factories of about four million per day.

Going by that, each of the Ferrets could spend a million dollars per day, get absolutely nothing back, and they’d still be breaking even.

Oh, 5% return on investment is fairly reasonable for easily-liquidated investments, although that is assuming simple interest rather than compound.

The ten-year-return figure for the factories (and unknown other business interests) is considerably more speculative, although – if the owner is fifteen billion ahead – the actual investment in those facilities is probably considerably more than the fifteen billion in cash. There’s no way to estimate a rate-of-return there except to throw in an assumption about how long it took to build up those cash reserves. I did pick “ten years” (a moderately optimistic figure) on the presumption that – to build up that kind of wealth – Mr Milton had to have been aggressively re-investing and expanding. If we presume that Mr Milton spent some time coasting in happy retirement, a twenty-year figure would be more likely – but since this calculation was only to illustrate a point, I took the ten-year figure because it does come closer to an even result.

The actual result under those two assumptions would have been 6,164,383.56 per day – but the “fifteen billion” figure is almost certainly rounded off, so carrying out such a calculation would be quite unjustified. Minor variations also wouldn’t affect the basic point that the Milton Estate could easily afford some rather large daily losses, but the “one million dollars a day each” variation reads far more easily than the “685 thousand each per day” (assuming that the 15 billion represents a 20-year accumulation) or the “1.23 million each per day” (8% interest on the 15 billion and staying with the ten-year accumulation period) that I could reach with other assumptions.

If the ferrets ever do go flat broke, I doubt that would mean the end of the neighborhood. The families here seem to own their homes, not rent them, so if the ferret’s assets are ever liquidated, the homes (and hence, the neighborhood) won’t be on the list.

At most, I figure what could happen is that they stop patching up potholes on the neighborhood’s main street, or cutting the weeds in the dog park, if that happens to remain privately owned.

Hard to say really. The wolves are “renting” their house and I don’t think the topic has come up much otherwise. Renting instead of selling would have given Mr Milton a good deal more control over the area, allowing him to keep it “pet friendly” more easily and might help explain why that house that burned down during the easter egg hunt might be dismissed so casually; it certainly wouldn’t have been as important to Mr Milton as it would be to some individual owner.

Eliminating the consequences of an otherwise insane action (such as burning a house) definitely helps making things funny, though as rick showed us with his sixth strip, bringing them back when you least expect it also helps